WPI Research Publication

FALL 2012

WPI Research is the research magazine of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. It contains news and features about graduate research in the arts and sciences, business, and engineering, along with notes about new grants, books, and faculty achievements.

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The Strength of Interdisciplinarity Among WPI's many impres- sive attributes, one that par- ticularly stands out for me is the ability to create rich, interdisciplinary curricula and imaginative and important research projects of interest to students, partners, and spon- sors alike. In my nearly four decades in higher education I have not seen this done any better than here at WPI. In my opinion, an important contributing factor to this success is WPI's makeup as a true polytechnic, one of only five in the country, and one of the nation's oldest; meaning that we do not claim to be a fully comprehensive research university, but rather one with concentrated research strengths in closely related fields (those of science and engineering) with strong, overlapping interests. Hence, cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary thinking comes naturally and enthusiastically to our faculty and students. Equally influential, I would submit, has been WPI's pioneering curriculum, known as the WPI Plan, offering our students a unique, project-based experience that emphasizes collaborative learning and work, and places great importance on outcomes rather than simply on mastery. Working across disciplines with other talented teams and individuals is a common requirement in the professional world; so, too, at WPI. Likewise, the spirit of collaboration empowers faculty to imagine boldly, well beyond conventional expectations, what is possible in their own research; interdisciplinary behavior is simply second nature at WPI. This explains, in part, why WPI was the first university in the country to offer an under- graduate major in robotics engineering. A rapidly expanding field, robotics engineering reflects the growing importance of interdisciplinary thinking, for it demands a broad range of skills and knowledge, requiring faculty and students to integrate and apply knowledge from at least three major disciplines (computer science and both electrical and mechanical engineering). The world has no better example of the power of interdisciplinary thinking than the engineering marvel we witnessed this past summer when NASA landed a 2,000 lb. mobile science lab called Curiosity on the surface of Mars. It does not surprise us here, though it is a source of pride, to discover that one of our graduates, Richard Cournoyer '98, MFE '99, held an important leadership role in this project, overseeing six divisional machine shops at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab that were charged with building a significant portion of Curiosity, as well as its amazing descent vehicle. You will find innovative thinking and interdisciplinary research quite prominent throughout this edition of WPI Research, beginning with our cover story on metallurgy, where innovative approaches are breathing new life into one of man- kind's oldest disciplines. Our story on Big Data — featuring humanities professor Brent Faber, head of WPI's new Analytics Lab, as well as social science and policy studies professor Mike Radziki and computer science professor Elke Rundensteiner — shows how faculty from different disciplines collaborate in an effort to develop new analytic tools that can better handle the vast amount of data that now dominates our modern world. And our story "Robots for the Real World" reveals the multi- disciplinary approach that computer scientists and engineers take in their efforts to create robots that are more human-like. I have long maintained, and indeed have expressed such before in this very publication, that the most pressing prob- lems facing our world are interdisciplinary in nature. From energy shortages to healthcare to feeding the world to envi- ronmental challenges, the solutions needed will require new approaches, new ideas, new ways of thinking — which is what interdisciplinary research is all about. " The spirit of collaboration empowers faculty to imagine boldly, well beyond conventional expectations, what is possible in their own research; interdisciplinary behavior is simply second nature at WPI." A message from President Dennis D. Berkey

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